


The End

by Ashling



Category: Original Work
Genre: Angst, Betrayal, Blood, Crying, Dark, Established Relationship, F/F, Major Character Injury, Secret Relationship, Tragedy, Violence, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-28
Updated: 2020-07-28
Packaged: 2021-03-04 23:01:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,196
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25394269
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ashling/pseuds/Ashling
Summary: Every year, the Masked Knight fails to beat the Champion in the tournament. Every year, the Masked Knight visits the Champion in her room.This year, there is no Masked Knight in the tournament, but someone shows up to the Champion's room anyway.
Relationships: Knight/Knight, Original Female Character/Original Female Character
Comments: 6
Kudos: 7
Collections: Battleship 2020, Battleship 2020 - Yellow Team





	The End

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ba_lailah](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ba_lailah/gifts).



> The letter said, _While I love fluff deeply, with femslash I also love stories where the protagonists are flawed, or the plot ends up dark, or both_ and that really unlocked something in me.

Char thought she had done a damn good job getting through the annual Mason’s Day Tournament. For one thing, she wasn’t drunk. For another, she wasn’t crying. She also wasn’t dead. 

The fact that she’d won several events meant nothing. She had expected it. The competition this year was thinner by only one, but it was the only one that counted. So many people had asked her about it—even a couple noblewomen had stopped her on her way to the stables—but she was, by now, quite adept at lying. _The Masked Knight? No, I have no idea._

Lots of false smiles. And now the only safe indulgence Char had left was a bed, probably the best in the inn from the way the housekeeper had been looking at her. Celebrity had its benefits. She fumbled with her keys at the door, only to find that it was already unlocked. 

“Fuck,” she said, to nobody in particular. She was almost tempted to just turn around, go back downstairs, and drink herself to sleep on the tavern bench, but that smacked of cowardice, which was pretty much the only vice left she knew how to leave alone. So after a delusional moment, steeling herself—of course it wouldn’t be enough—she pushed open the door.

It had been only six months, but the Masked Knight was clearly dead. The Masked Knight had had hair cut just below her ears; this young woman had hair that fell well beyond her waist, glossy and thick. Her scalp was stained saffron from sacred herbs, and Char could smell them from the doorway. And this wasn’t the only change. The knight had been golden with hours spent in the sun, but this woman was pale as snow; the knight had brown eyes that could go honey in strong light, but this woman had neither pupil nor iris nor white in her eyes, only one unbroken pool of black. And the tattoos. They were so intricate that Char could hardly tell where the scales ended and the feathers began. 

“How did you get in here?” she said tiredly. 

“Haven’t you heard?” The woman smiled wide, revealing two rows of teeth made of emeralds. “I’m the Queen now. I get whatever I want.” 

_No, you don’t,_ Char thought. _For instance, you’re wearing a crown._ “So you just swanned up to the innkeeper and demanded my key? Aren’t you worried about assassins?”

“I’m never worried about assassins.” She waved one hand languidly, and her silk sleeve fell down a couple inches. 

For a moment, Char was gratified to see that an old scar still remained there, one thick, raised line. Then she cursed herself. She was tired. She was not in a state to do this. “Are you making me part of your harem, then? Is that the tactic? Just sweeping in and sweeping me away?”

“Is that what you think of me?”

“I don’t know what to think of you,” said Char. “And why should it matter?” It cost her an effort to say that. It was one thing to talk glibly of gods and kings when she was a little drunk and she’d just beaten everyone who thought they could take her on, and it was another thing to look full on into those flat black eyes like two polished stones. 

The woman smiled. It was very deliberately a movement of her mouth; her eyes, and the skin around her eyes, did not move at all. “I missed you,” she said, and despite the horrorshow of her face, there was a note in her voice that made Char think that she meant it. And it hurt. She’d heard the Masked Knight say those words before, many times, and she’d answered them with a kiss. Now, though.

“What do you want?” she said. 

“Join me. Not in the harem. In the guard, in the army, in the spymaster’s circle, in the laundry, in the stables. Anywhere you want, anything you want, as long as you’ll spar with me.”

“Metaphorically or literally?”

“Is there much of a difference?”

“I suppose not.” There was no item of furniture in the room aside from Char’s open traveling trunk, so she sat down on the floor and began unlacing her boots. She could feel the woman watching her, but she pointedly ignored it.

“See, this is why I need you,” the woman said, after Char’s left boot was off and she’d started in on the right one. “You’re the only one who would do something like this.”

“Take my boots off?”

“In my presence.”

“It’s nothing special; I just know you won’t have me killed. Nobody else has that distinction.”

“You said you didn’t know what to think of me.”

“Yeah, so,” said Char, “that was a lie.” She was sitting on the floor in her stockinged feet and looking up at the woman, who had always been taller, taller and broader-shouldered and stronger, but never quicker. She was unarmed and she was sitting on the floor and she thought, for a second, she would be able to wake up from this. It was, of course, not true.

“Nobody else tries to lie to me. Not my own people, anyway.”

“Is that not a good thing?”

“They don’t treat me like I’m human.”

“You’re not,” said Char. She tried to make that come out flat, but she could hear the bitterness in it. 

“You don’t want to watch how you speak to your Queen?” The woman made a small movement on the bed, and even under all that silk, Char understood the coiling of the muscles in her thighs. If she wanted to jump, she could. 

“You’re not my Queen. I’m choosing my words carefully, believe me.” 

They stared at each other for a long moment. 

“Get up,” the woman said. Her voice seemed to echo, faintly. “I want to spar. I had to miss the tournament this year; you should give me this much.”

“I don’t think I will,” said Char, bracing herself. 

The woman jumped. The impact of her knocked Char onto her back, and her head hit the floor with a hard thud, but a moment later, with the woman squatting on her, one foot on her hip, one on her stomach, she felt barely any weight at all. The woman’s long black hair pooled on Char’s chest, ran along the side of her, cool against her skin where her shirt had rucked up. 

“You’ve fought me so many times before, you have one more in you,” the woman said. “One more, for old times’ sake. I missed you, little knight.” She slipped one ice-cold hand under Char’s shirt, laid her palm flat against her stomach, making her shiver. “I missed you.”

“It’s not you I’d be fighting,” Char said. Pain radiated from the back of her head in waves. The cold hand withdrew, and then the woman slapped her so hard and so fast that the sting of her cheek registered first and everything else came after. She was never this fast before. Never. And she’d been cruel, sometimes, and callous, and bratty, but never as vicious as this. 

“Aren’t you going to defend your honor?” the woman said. She was holding Char by the chin now, leaning in close. Her fingernails were sharpened to sharp tips, and they dug in. Blood trickled down Char’s neck. The thing about pain, Char had learned, was that she could bear it, but no amount of experience with it ever made it easier. And _fuck_. Fuck. She wanted a drink.

Char tried to think of something remotely clever to say, but nothing came. She had been exhausted and heartsore beyond words before she even opened the door. 

“Fuck you.”

At once, the woman jumped off her and to the side, twisting her body so that she could bring her elbow in savage backswing. When it made contact with Char’s nose, she felt the crunch as much as she heard it, and then she tasted the blood, and it took every inch of discipline to repress all her instincts. For forty years, she’d trained to fight back, and now her hands were balled into fists at her sides. And stayed there, even as the woman’s ice-cold hands closed around her neck.

This was playing dirty. Char had told her about the summer she nearly drowned twice, in the year of the floods. The year of the blood sacrifice. The year of everything that had fucked both of them up even though they were too young to know it yet. The indignity of it ripped through her, but only for a moment, and then the panic followed, as inescapable as a forest fire. She closed her eyes, and that didn’t help. The woman whispered, “Come on,” and that did help, but not enough and not for long. Char could bear bleeding and dying even but not this, not this, and in one last desperate attempt she lashed out with her feet, connecting with the trunk hard enough to break through the wood panelling, but that didn’t budge the hands around her throat, not even an inch. Char broke. She had no air to scream with but she tried to scream anyway, flailed like a pinned animal, desperate and thoughtless, and she connected with the woman’s face, her arms, grabbed at her arms, and that did nothing and would do nothing and then the hands fell away. She rolled on her side, weak, and pushed away with her feet until her head hit the far wall and she couldn’t get away any further. 

“You see,” said the woman. She was squatting on her haunches, watching. “You fight me, and then we—”

“You _promised_ ,” Char gasped. “You promised, you promised.” And despite being for once in her life stone cold sober and perfectly lucid, she found herself crying like a child, sobbing with an abandon she thought she’d left thirty years behind her. The shame of it was nothing to the shame of knowing how stupid she had been. Who believed the promises of royalty, much less royalty of this fucking family? This rat viper sixteen-generations- _fucked_ thorn tangle of poison and shit. It shouldn’t have been her. She’d seen people die under that flag. _She’d seen the blood sacrifice herself._ But when it came down to it, all it took was some promising young thing with strong arms and a sob story about castle life to disarm her. Strong arms, a sob story about castle life, a sweet voice. The rare smile. There was romance, too, in being the only one who knew the identity of the Masked Knight, but was that enough to throw herself away? Was that really all she took? Gods, but she was cheap. Cheap, and all used up.

The woman was standing over her now. The hem of her silk robe brushed Char’s ankle. “I just wanted to know what it felt like to beat you,” she said. “And now I do. That’s all you’re for. You’re a hide for my wall, champion. I’ll nail you up next to the boar my grandfather killed.”

Char looked up at her, and then it happened. It finally happened. The pain faded just enough, and the rage, and the fear, and even her newfound hatred seemed to part like the curtains of a stage, revealing to her just what she needed to know. She’d had this moment before, spotting a slight limp, a repeated combination of blows, a tendency to aim for the left shoulder. One vulnerability was all she needed. She was still crying, but she could see it, and that was enough.

“You’ll never know what it’s like to beat me,” Char said hoarsely. “That’s what burns, isn’t it? The strength of your god runs in your veins now, and and you’ll never have your own strength again. I thought you were strong enough to do it. I thought you had the gift. I thought that in maybe two or three years, I’d be the one getting down on my knees for you, and I looked forward to it, do you know that? I was going to be happy for you. I thought you had it in you. But I also thought you were strong enough to rule without blood sacrifices securing you, I thought you would keep your word, so maybe I was wrong and you would never win. Never. Maybe every year for the rest of your life I would have beaten you like a—”

Curiously, there was no cruelty in the way the woman killed Char. It was one kick to break her neck, so swiftly that she didn’t even have time to anticipate her own death. 

Then the woman sat down on the bed and pawed through the trunk until she found Char’s good boots, the long black ones that laced up to her thighs. Inside the left boot, as expected, was a bottle half-full. The woman pincered the cork between two sharp nails, then drank straight from the bottle. She looked at the body. She wiped her mouth.

“You promised you would always be on my side,” she said. 


End file.
